The football blog dedicated to the world of Wolverhampton Wanderers and the world of football.

November 11, 2017

The dream start for Wolves requires a touch of reality

Ok, let’s take a breather, take deep breaths, calm ourselves and be cool.

That was some start to the season wasn’t it?

A third of the way in and Wolves sit on top of the league with 35 points, the most goals, the most clean sheets and currently odds as short as 4/9 to win the title.

The football on show has been of a standard not seen at Molineux in decades, in fact a friend’s dad put it on a par to when Wolves beat Juventus back in 1972 – what I’d give to see that fixture in the near future.

Who wouldn’t be intoxicated by the feel good factor in Wolverhampton right now? Top clubs want to poach our manager, we’re The Championship’s highest scorers and our foreign contingents have proved they can do it on a cold Tuesday night in Norwich.

Things are going so well for Wolves that it’s almost suspiciously too good. Wolves being Wolves they never let their ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory surprise us.
And yet this feels different there’s a swagger and assurance about our play and organisation. Ruben Neves (oh yeah, the captain of Porto we just so happen to nick off them) is growing by the game and any doubt he was here as a passenger to the Premier League has long been eradicated standing up to the physical attention of Millwall and Preston.

But if anything it speaks about the quality on show this season when our record signing is being overshadowed by a couple of loan stars. Diogo Jota and Leo Bonatini have been flying this season with the latter picking up two player of the month awards (scoring in six of the last six games) while Jota is drawing praise from opposing fans as ‘the best to play at this level’ – that’s some compliment right there.

These are good times at Wolves but if we needed a warning of how long we have to go we only have to look back at the 2008/09 campaign. It seemed like a scrap and scrape to the finish with heart in mouth football and losing streaks and yet we won the league with 90 points – seven points more than Birmingham who we never beat that season.

It was in October of that year that we went top (almost exactly to the game we went first this campaign) and that’s where we remained until May. In fact, we had more points after 16 games that season than we do now, we didn’t even drop a place and yet it didn’t feel so straight forward at the time, believe me.

There will be times before May where we go through difficult spells and while we all should soak up the buzz around Molineux right now it’s important to remain real and no matter how well we play now, promotions aren’t secured in November.

For some of the younger readers, go to Google and search ‘Division 1 2001/2002 season’ there’s a horror story that will keep you awake at night.

We will face injuries, we will face defeats and our fixtures around Christmas are as hard as they come. Add this to April, which is always a difficult month, with the pressure on and teams fighting for promotion, play-off places and survival, there’s a reason The Championship is known as the most competitive division in Europe.

With that said could we have a better manager in place for a scenario like this?

Nuno Espirto Santo, the guy personifies coolness, if you caught him sleeping in bed with the missus you’d kick her out of bed and join him.

His interviews are methodical, his tone calm and his passion as clear as the waters off the coast of his native Portugal.

If Nuno told me I could walk on said waters I’d still believe him even if I was drowning, he has that aura.

Nuno more than anyone will know that Wolves have got off to a flyer but the next 16 games – which takes us to the middle of February – will tell if we’re the real deal or not.

You can look at the odds from the bookies and read the gushing tweets of opposing fans but if there’s one club that knows nothing is handed to them on a plate, it is Wolverhampton Wanderers.

Seeing us top in November is a beautiful sight to see but that view will mean nothing if it’s not replicated come May.

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One thought on “The dream start for Wolves requires a touch of reality”

I’m never one to count chickens before they’re hatched so to get carried away now, when the eggs have scarcely been laid, is definitely not in my DNA. However, there are many good signs beside the irrepressible form our first eleven are showing.
Of course, there will be injuries. We’ve been lucky (is it really just luck) so far, with a very limited amount of damage to our main men. However, the superb performances at St Marys and The Etihad show the incredible strength in depth we have in our squad. Our subs coming on in games slot in seamlessly and everyone seems to be singing from the same hymn sheet.
Furthermore, rumours abound about considerable strengthening in key positions in January
and there can be little doubt that the owners mean business.
So yes, the chickens remain unhatched, but there’s a whole lot of clucking going on.